Originally Posted by
Road Fan
Side note, I don't know why a Tommasini fork would have less integrity than a Masi, Mondonico, early '80s Trek, or any other traditional steel fork. I think that having the builder's original geometry and aesthetics would trump, well, whatever makes you think they are inadequate. But, why do you think a Tommo fork might not be good enough?
Maybe I didn't word that very well. Maybe I should have said lightweight racing bike fork to be clear, all of which quality brands are fine for their intended purposes. But that doesn't really included head on crashes and I think it is safe to say that a lighter weight fork will suffer more injury in this sort of event. We've all seen pics of bikes w/really stout forks after an accident where the fork transmits a huge amount of damage to the main triangle and the fork gets off relatively easy.
In this case, the forks actually have a big crease in them and were very bent. If anything, this is good, albeit perhaps unintentional, design, it is far less trouble/cost to replace a fork after a crash than the frame, so long as the fork is strong enough to stand up to normal usage.
And just one more time for the record, I don't think Tommasini forks are in any way inadequate - rather, they are works of art. It isn't like anyone is designing their forks for this sort of abuse and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other fork/frame combinations would end up with the same distribution of damage.